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Chapter 1 Europe: A Continent in the Making

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• Useful websites 
• Discussion questions
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Chapter Summary

The continent’s early history was characterized by pan-European enterprises, like the Roman Empire, that rose to prominence and then, unable to maintain a grip on their far-flung territories, fell into disrepair.

Competition between Europe’s monarchies, and conflicts over religion, encouraged warfare that needed to be paid for, leading to greater centralization and to international treaties that established some if not all the borders we know today.

Later pan-European empires, such as the Holy Roman Empire, were even more loosely coupled and gave way to smaller nations run more effectively by monarchs. Some of these – with Spain in the vanguard but Britain not far behind – began to seek their own empires in the New Worlds of America and India.

With the coming of industry (and industrialized warfare) the tendency of states to seek protective alliances combined with the ideological struggle between capitalism and socialism to produce the Cold War – a stand-off between blocs led by the USA and the USSR that split Europe between a Soviet-ruled east and a west that sought peace and prosperity through European integration.

European economies vary according to size, resources and history: size isn’t everything but the richest countries tend to be bigger, to have industrialized relatively earlier and to have escaped communism. Although most European countries are richer than they have ever been, unemployment has returned to haunt them.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, CEE countries were free to determine their own destiny and overwhelmingly plumped for liberal capitalism. Many of them also joined what has become the European Union (EU).

Europe’s postcommunist countries have made huge – if not always unfaltering or even – strides towards catching up with their western counterparts economically, although it will still be a long haul.

The relationship between industrialization and wealth no longer holds – Europe’s future lies in the service economy.

Europe’s economies and its welfare states can be more or less neatly divided up according to the extent to which government plays an active role and the extent to which welfare is intended as living expression of egalitarian solidarity or a form of social insurance or merely a safety net.

Globalization does not spell doom for European economies, although some are adjusting better than others.

While their governments are still committed to relatively high social spending and poverty is decreasing, most European countries are far from being classless societies – indeed, inequality and social mobility may well be increasing rather than decreasing in some of them. Education is certainly no panacea.

Gender inequality continues to be the norm in Europe, although Nordic countries have made more progress on this score than most. Despite increased participation in education and in the workplace, women earn less and do more unpaid domestic work – possibly because of childbirth and childcare. Progress is partly dependent on political action but, remarkably, there is little demand for it.

Europe is not quite as Godless as some people assume: large numbers still profess to believe and, although, fewer people attend places of worship regularly, many still use them to mark births, marriages and deaths, etc. Christianity is still dominant, but Muslims (and Jews) make up an important part of Europe’s religious identity.

Many European states contain ethnic and national minorities. This means a large number of people have multiple attachments. There is also some, albeit limited, evidence of the emergence of a European identity, although this varies between countries. The basic values that many deem necessary for the survival of capitalist liberal democracy, however, seem to be present in almost all countries, whatever their history.

Useful websites

(For general web materials on European Politics see Tim Bale's Internet Guide)

www.worldatlas.com 
Maps and basic country information

www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook
 Detailed country information

www.hdr.undp.org  
Country facts and figures from the UN

www.nationmaster.com  
Make your own charts and tables

www.epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu and www.oecd.org  
Country and EU statistics

www.ec.europa.eu/public_opinion  
Europe-wide survey research

www.pbs.org/wgbh/peoplescentury and www.historyteacher.net  
European history

www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war a 
All things Cold War

ec.Europe.eu/employment_social/publications/2007/ke8007123_en.pdf 
Full of up-to-date figures on demographics in Europe.

Discussion questions

1. Different countries have risen and fallen in pre eminence in Europe over the last five hundred years. Pick one or two examples: why and how do you think status was gained and then lost?

2. What do you think drove Europe toward two world wars in the first half of the twentieth century? And how, in your opinion, has it managed to avoid something similar happening since then?

3. There may have been no world war after 1945 but there was a Cold War. Was such a conflict inevitable and why do you think did it came to an end?

4. Why is there so much economic variation between, but also within, European countries? And what does it mean to say that they are almost all ‘post industrial’?

5. he new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have had to adapt to life after communism: can you point to particular successes and failures?

6. How would you define globalization and what impact, if any, is it having on Europe? If you are opposed to it, why?

7. Europeanization doesn’t mean that all the continent’s countries are becoming more like each other. How does the organization and extent of welfare in different states, for instance, illustrate this point?

8. It’s often assumed that Europe is becoming more classless, gender blind, and secular. Do you think that’s the case?  

9. Why do some inequalities seem to mobilize people politically and others, which are just as glaring and have political ramifications, apparently excite little interest?

10. Why might it be unrealistic to talk about Europeans, or, for that matter, about, say, Britons or Spaniards or Belgians or Cypriots or Slovaks or Estonians or Latvians?

Updates

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